One of computers I grew most fond of was my trusty SGI Visual Workstation 540. This machine had a Pentium III 1GHz processor, VIA Pro Apollo 133A chipset and the first Quadro by nVidia - simply named Quadro. So, when I heard the news about "the final demise" of SGI, I felt sad. However, Rackable Systems [NASDAQ: RACK] announced that its acquisition of Silicon Graphics does not mean the end of the legendary company. In order to boost its presence on international markets, the company decided to rename itself into SGI.
While Rackable Systems is a known brand in the North American markets, most of the world recognizes the name SGI above Rackable. Given the headcount, one could argue that SGI ate Rackable, not the other way around. Rackable Systems were consisted of 300 people, while the new company will have 1300 employees, with most of the head-count coming from the SGI.
SGI's legendary high-performance graphics/visualization systems will continue to exist, since Rackable wants to keep that branch of business too. Original transaction was supposed to cost 25 million greenbacks, but due to costs of bankruptcy auction proceedings, the company had to spend additional 17.5 million to acquire all of the assets of this defunct giant, who received the ultimate insult of being delisted from the stock market three weeks before being acquired by Rackable.
